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Feds investigate Clinch County judge

Federal authorities are investigating $67,255 in undisclosed payments to Clinch County employees ordered by the chief judge of Georgia's Alapaha Judicial Circuit, whose office was raided by FBI agents last month.

Records show Superior Court Judge Brooks E. Blitch III, the circuit's chief judge, has ordered monthly payments to three employees since 2001. A report by the county auditor says the payments were kept off the court clerk's books and were not reported to state or federal tax collectors.

According to an order Blitch signed Sept. 13, 2001, the money came from an extra $10 in court fees the judge ordered assessed for every criminal case in Superior Court and State Court.

The FBI and the office of Maxwell Wood, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, declined to comment Monday. Records show Wood's office has subpoenaed county documents for a grand jury investigation.

Barry Hart, vice chairman of the Clinch County Commission, said commissioners reported the payments to state authorities after the court clerk, Danny Leccese, first revealed them when questioned by commissioners in January.

"If you come to Clinch County, that's a bunch of money - our county budget's about $3 million," Hart said Monday. "I don't think it's really legal. But when a Superior Court judge hands you a court order, what do you do?"

Blitch has served more than 20 years as a Superior Court judge in Clinch County, which has about 7,000 residents near the Okefenokee Swamp just north of the Georgia-Florida border. His wife, Peg Blitch, is a former Georgia state senator.

When the judge began ordering the payments in 2001, commissioners had voted a month earlier to stop paying extra money to employees for helping supervise misdemeanor probationers in addition to their full-time duties.

Instead, that money was used to pay a private contractor to handle the probation caseload. Hart said the judge's order reinstated the monthly stipends of $250 to $300 to employees after commissioners had voted to discontinue them.

On June 26, FBI agents executed a search warrant on Blitch's office at the courthouse annex in Homerville. The raid was first reported by the Clinch County News and the Fulton County Daily Report.

Clinch County Magistrate Judge Linda Peterson said Monday that agents were already searching Blitch's office when she came to work at 7:45 a.m., and they didn't leave until after 4 p.m.

"There were maybe five or six cars and at the most maybe eight or nine agents," Peterson said. "One was standing guard at the door all the time. Judge Blitch did walk up, and they didn't let him in."

Peterson said she recognized two of the agents from when she appeared in May before a federal grand jury in Macon to answer questions about how the county supervised misdemeanor probationers.

The Associated Press also obtained a copy of a June 5 subpoena ordering Sherrie Peterson, clerk of the Clinch County Commission, to provide the grand jury by June 12 documents relating to funding for misdemeanor probationer supervision.

A June 8 report to the county commission by auditor M. Paul Nichols Jr. showed that $76,283 was deposited between September 2001 and April 2007 into the bank account Blitch set aside for the payments.

The report says money from the account was paid to five Clinch County employees.